Tag: ethnic cleansing

Fragmenting a Nation: Israel’s Enduring Pursuit of Palestinian Disunity

Israel is aggressively implementing plans to shape Palestine’s future and the broader region, sculpting its vision for the ‘day after’ its genocide in Gaza.

The latest, bizarre iteration of this strategy proposes fragmenting the occupied West Bank into so-called ’emirates,’ starting with the ’emirate of Hebron.’

This unexpected twist in Israel’s protracted search for alternative Palestinian leadership first surfaced in the staunchly pro-Israeli US newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. It then quickly dominated all Israeli media.

The report details a letter from a person identified by the WSJ as “the leader of Hebron’s most influential clan.” Addressed to Nir Barakat, Jerusalem’s former Israeli mayor, the letter from Sheikh Wadee’ al-Jaabari appeals for “cooperation with Israel” in the name of “co-existence.”

This “co-existence,” according to the “clan leader”, would materialize in the “Emirate of Hebron.” This “emirate” would “recognize the State of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people,” in exchange for reciprocal recognition of the “Emirate of Hebron as the Representative of the Arab residents in the Hebron District.”

The story may seem perplexing. This is because Palestinian discourse, regardless of geography or political affiliation, has never entertained such an absurd concept as united West Bank “emirates.”

Another element of absurdity is that Palestinian national identity and pride in their people’s unwavering resilience, especially in Gaza, are at an unprecedented apex. To float such clan-based alternatives to legitimate Palestinian leadership seems ill-conceived and is destined to fail.

Israel’s desperation is palpable. In Gaza, it cannot defeat Hamas and other Palestinian factions who have resisted the Israeli takeover of the Strip for 21 months. All attempts to engineer an alternative Palestinian leadership there have utterly collapsed.

This failure has compelled Israel to arm and fund a criminal gang that operated before October 7, 2023, in Gaza. This gang functions under the command of Yasser Abu Shabab.

The gang has been implicated in a litany of violent activities. These include hijacking humanitarian aid to perpetuate famine in Gaza and orchestrating violence associated with aid distribution, among other egregious crimes.

Like the clan leader of Hebron, the Abu Shabab criminal gang possesses no legitimacy and no public support among Palestinians. But why would Israel resort to such disreputable figures when the Palestinian Authority (PA), already engaged in “security coordination” with Israel in the West Bank, is ostensibly willing to comply?

The answer lies in the current Israeli extremist government’s adamant refusal to acknowledge Palestinians as a nation. Thus, even a collaborating Palestinian nationalist entity would be deemed problematic from an Israeli perspective.

While Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is not the first Israeli leadership to explore clan-based alternatives among Palestinians, the Israeli prime minister and his extremist allies are exceptionally determined to dismantle any Palestinian claim to nationhood. This was explicitly stated by extremist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. He famously declared in Paris, in March 2023, that a Palestinian nation is an “invention.”

Thus, despite the PA’s willingness to cooperate with Israel in controlling Gaza, Israel remains apprehensive. Empowering the PA as a nationalist model fundamentally contravenes Israel’s overarching objectives of denying the Palestinian people their very claim to nationhood and, consequently, statehood and sovereignty.

Though Israel has consistently failed to establish and sustain its own alternative Palestinian leadership, its repeated efforts have invariably proven disruptive and violent.

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MAGA Going to Israel for Propaganda Training

The Israel foreign ministry will spend $86,000 to finance a tour of Israel for 16 Americans to get them to use their vast online influence to craft more positive images of a nation openly engaged in genocide. 

The effort is being made as Israel reacts to a significant turn in public opinion against it, especially by Western youth. Tel Aviv realizes its usual methods of propaganda — and apparently its own inhouse troll army — are no longer working as they once did. 

The daily Haaretz reported: 

“Foreign Ministry officials say the tour delivers significant media, advocacy, and diplomatic benefits – and represents a strategic shift, as traditional outreach is no longer sufficient to shape public opinion. They aim to leverage the massive followings of young social media influencers to bolster Israel’s standing in the U.S.” 

The Americans, whose names have not been divulged, belong to the MAGA and America First movements, the newspaper said. They are all younger than 30 and each have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers, a vast, target-rich environment for propaganda.  Israel intends to bring more than 500 “influencer delegations” to Israel this year, the ministry said.

It is paying an organization called Israel365 to organize the first American tour because it is in a “unique position to convey a pro-Israel stance that aligns entirely with the MAGA and America First agenda.” 

Israel365’s website says the group “stands unapologetically for the Jewish people’s God-given right to the entire Land of Israel,” calls the two-state solution a “delusion,” and says it’s defending “Western civilization against threats from both Progressive Left extremism and global jihad.” 

Israeli officials justified the no-bid contract with the organization because of its “experience and know-how in creating awareness, engagement, and mobilization of Christian audiences regarding their support for the Jewish people and the State of Israel,” Haaretz reported. 

Ministry officials told the newspaper that “while older Republicans and American conservatives still hold pro-Israel views, positive perspectives towards Israel are falling across all younger age groups.”

News of the tour comes after the U.S. national teachers union voted to ditch the Zionist curriculum of the Ant-Defamation League, which was influencing young American minds.

Western youth, including conservatives, have become increasingly aware of the history of Israel’s expulsion of Palestinian people from their land and of Israel’s stated genocidal intent and actions in Gaza today. It is a wave of understanding Israel needs to contain.

A ministry source said: “We’re working with influencers, sometimes with delegations of influencers. Their networks have huge followings, and their messages are more effective than if they came directly from the ministry.”

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Israel Orders Evacuations In Central Gaza, Widening Military Offensive

On Sunday, the Israeli military (IDF) issued new evacuation orders for parts of central Gaza, which even after years of war with Hamas is an area where Israeli ground forces have rarely operated, further restricting access between Deir al-Balah and the southern cities of Rafah and Khan Younis.

This strongly suggests that indirect efforts to achieve another ceasefire are far from producing anything effective, and it points to Prime Minister Netanyahu pursuing his ultra-controversial plan for mass resettlement of Gaza’s Palestinian population.

Netanyahu has continued to assert that intensifying military pressure in Gaza could compel Hamas to negotiate on terms favorable to Israel and for the return of remaining hostages.

At this moment, the Israeli military claims to control at least 65% of land in Gaza. This is after 21 months of war triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack, which many have considered to be “Israel’s 9/11”.

The Hostages Family Forum, which represents many of the families of hostages, has condemned the evacuation announcement – as it signals the going pursuit of a military solution to the crisis. Families have continued to demand that Netanyahu strike a peace deal, for the return of all remaining living and deceased hostages.

“Enough! The Israeli people overwhelmingly want an end to the fighting and a comprehensive agreement that will return all of the hostages,” the forum said Saturday on the occasion of tens of thousands of protesters marching in Tel Aviv to the US Embassy location. 

Meanwhile, 65 Palestinians were reported killed Sunday while trying to access humanitarian aid, according to local hospitals, amid growing international spotlight on a controversial program which has seen a US security firm try to spearhead aid distribution.

There are also ongoing concerns of famine and unprecedented levels of malnutrition among the Palestinian population, and reports of more children dying. 

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Stop Israel’s Dystopian ‘Humanitarian City’ Plan – Before It’s Too Late

The Israeli government has just put forward one of the most brazenly genocidal schemes in modern memory – and unless we act immediately, the world will once again let it happen.

As reported in Haaretz, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz is proposing to force some 600,000 Palestinians – and eventually the entire population of Gaza – into a fenced-in “humanitarian city” to be built on the ruins of Rafah in southern Gaza. The plan is to “screen” the population, separate out alleged Hamas members, and then pressure the remaining civilians – men, women, and children – to “voluntarily” leave Gaza for another country. Which country? That hasn’t even been determined. The point isn’t relocation – it’s erasure. This reflects a long-standing goal among many Israelis, especially on the right, to take full control of Gaza and clear it of Palestinians.

The UN has warned that the deportation or forcible transfer of an occupied territory’s civilian population is strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law and “tantamount to ethnic cleansing”.

While all eyes are focused on a possible ceasefire, Gallant is not interested in peace – he’s interested in a “final solution.” A speeding up of the second Nakba we have been witnessing for the past 20 months. In fact, he has stated that construction would begin during a 60-day ceasefire. So what’s the point of a ceasefire, if it’s used to build a concentration camp?

Once Palestinians are herded into this camp, they will not be allowed to leave for other parts of Gaza. They won’t be allowed to return to what’s left of their homes, their neighborhoods, their farms, their schools. They will be trapped inside this militarized zone, under constant surveillance, held at gunpoint until Israel can arrange their deportation.

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Netanyahu ‘Regrets’ Deadly Attack On Gaza Church After Terse Trump Call

Thursday witnessed another Israeli strike on a church in Gaza, which killed three people and injured at least six others. Among the wounded was the parish priest.

Hundreds of Palestinians were sheltering at Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City when the church roof was hit around 10:10am local time, church officials describe. Shrapnel and debris came down through the roof and went flying, killing and wounding Christians inside.

While most circulating reports say an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tank directly fired on the church, a spokesman for the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem initially said it was unclear whether the munition was launched from an airplane or a tank. The neighborhood and area were coming under heavy Israeli gunfire at the time.

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who oversees the church, clarified in a statement to Vatican News, “What we know for sure is that a tank, the IDF says by mistake, but we are not sure about this, they hit the Church directly, the Church of the Holy Family, the Latin Church.”

He indicated that more victims might succumb to their injuries: “There are four people seriously wounded, among these four, two are in very dramatic conditions and their lives are in serious danger,” Pizzaballa said.

Pope Leo XIV has called for “an immediate cease-fire” in Gaza in a statement. His predecessor, Pope Francis, was known to have personally phoned Holy Family Catholic Church on a nightly basis to see how the community was faring, even when he was in the hospital.

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Criticizing Netanyahu Isn’t Anti-Semitism—It’s a Moral Obligation

In the months since October 7, when Hamas carried out a brutal and inexcusable attack on Israeli civilians, the world has watched in growing horror as the Israeli government—led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—has unleashed a campaign of destruction across the Gaza Strip that has few modern parallels. Entire families wiped out. Schools and hospitals reduced to rubble. Aid convoys bombed. Journalists silenced. Over 65,000 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of them women and children, according to the United Nations and humanitarian groups.

And yet, as calls for accountability and restraint rise, Netanyahu’s response has been consistent and cynical: any criticism of Israel is labeled “anti-Semitism.”

This is not only intellectually dishonest—it’s dangerous. It cheapens the real, rising threat of anti-Semitism globally by weaponizing it as a political shield for a government engaging in what many experts now consider war crimes.

Let me be clear: Anti-Semitism is real. It is a hatred that has haunted Jewish communities for centuries and led to unimaginable atrocities, including the Holocaust. But the demand for human rights and dignity for Palestinians is not born from that hatred—it is born from the very lessons that the Holocaust taught the world.

What Netanyahu’s government is doing in Gaza—dehumanizing a civilian population, forcing displacement, destroying infrastructure, and killing indiscriminately—is not a defense of the Jewish people. It is a betrayal of Jewish values, international law, and basic human decency.

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Massive Attack announce alliance of musicians speaking out over Gaza

Massive Attack, Brian Eno, Fontaines DC and Kneecap have announced the formation of a syndicate for artists speaking out about Israel’s military assault on Gaza, who they say have been subjected to “aggressive, vexatious campaigns” by pro-Israel advocates.

Posting on Instagram, the musicians said their aim was to protect other artists, particularly those at early stages of their careers, from being “threatened into silence or career cancellation” by organisations such as UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI).

UKLFI reported the band Bob Vylan to the police for leading a chant of “death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]” during their Glastonbury set and officers are investigating. It also reported the BBC for broadcasting the set. Bob Vylan have subsequently had several scheduled appearances cancelled after UKLFI sent letters.

Mo Chara of Kneecap was charged with a terrorism offence, accused of displaying a flag at a gig in support of the banned organisation Hezbollah after being reported to the police by UKLFI. Kneecap also had gigs cancelled after interventions by UKLFI.

While those actions were made public, UKLFI is also believed to have contacted other musicians, people and organisations connected with them without publicising the fact.

The post shared by Eno and others on Instagram says: “The scenes in Gaza have moved beyond description. We write as artists who’ve chosen to use our public platforms to speak out against the genocide occurring there and the role of the UK government in facilitating it.

“We’re aware of the scale of aggressive, vexatious campaigns operated by UKLFI and of multiple individual incidences of intimidation within the music industry itself, designed solely to censor and silence artists from speaking their hearts and minds.

“Having withstood these campaigns of attempted censorship, we won’t stand by and allow other artists – particularly those at earlier stages of their careers or in other positions of professional vulnerability – to be threatened into silence or career cancellation.”

They encourage other artists to contact them to make a collective stand on demands including an immediate and permanent ceasefire, immediate unfettered access to Gaza for recognised aid agencies and an end to UK arms sales and licences to Israel.

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Israel and Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall

Vladimir (Ze’ev) Jabotinsky (1880-1940) was a key figure in the development of the Zionist movement, which led to the founding of Israel in 1948. After breaking from mainline Zionism, Jabotinsky, born in Odessa (Ukraine), established Revisionist Zionism, a more openly militant version.

What is Revisionist Zionism? Even fellow Zionists saw similarities with fascism. According to Ramzy Baroud and Romana Rubeo, “Before the opportunistic alliance between Germany’s Nazi leader, Adolf Hitler, and Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, in 1936… a degree of affinity existed between Zionist and Fascist leaders in Rome.” Baroud and Rubeo went on:

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, of which Israel’s current Likud party and other right and far-right groups are the offspring, saw in Italy “a spiritual homeland.”

“All my views on nationalism, the state, and society were developed during those years under Italian influence,” Jabotinsky wrote in his autobiography, referring to his ideological formation years in Italy.

In return, Mussolini had expressly spoken in support of Zionism and of Jabotinsky in particular: “For Zionism to succeed, you need to have a Jewish State with a Jewish flag, and Jewish language. The person who understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky,” Mussolini said… in November 1934.

Paradoxically, Jabotinsky was also known as a classical liberal supporter of the market economy and the equal rights of all, including members of minority communities. He seems to have had early misgivings about the use of violence, but apparently overcame them. Historian and journalist David Hirst writes that Jabotinsky “once told a colleague, ‘I can’t see much heroism and public good in shooting from the rear an Arab peasant on a donkey, carrying vegetables for sale in Tel Aviv.’ …By June 1939 he had come to the conclusion that ‘it was not only difficult to punish only the guilty ones, in most cases it was impossible.’” (David Hirst, The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East.)

According to the Jewish Virtual Library (JVL), Revisionist Zionism’s goal was “the establishment of a Jewish state with a Jewish majority in the entire territory of Palestine, on both sides of the Jordan [river]. Jabotinsky’s organization favored a powerful Zionist military component. The JVL described the program:

The Revisionist program soon became more elaborate, asking, in addition to the demand for Jewish military units for the introduction of a whole new system of policy in Palestine, defined as a “settlement regime” – a system of legislative and administrative measures (such as land reform, state protection of local industries, a favorable fiscal system, etc.) explicitly designed to foster Jewish mass immigration and settlement.

Jabotinsky also founded the National Military Organization in the Land of Israel, known as Irgun, a paramilitary squad that committed terrorist acts in British-controlled Mandatory Palestine from 1931 to 1948. The Irgun became infamous for bombing Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in July 1946, where the British administration was headquartered, and conducting a massacre in the peaceful village of Deir Yassin in April 1948, a month before Israel declared its independence. The Deir Yassin massacre was one of the acts of Zionist militia violence that incited some 750,000 Palestinians to flee their homes in 1948. This is known in Arabic as the Nakba (catastrophe). During this time, Irgun was led by Menachem Begin, who became Israel’s prime minister in 1977. “Begin and his followers had shed few of the romantic, ultranationalist beliefs imparted by their spiritual godfather Vladimir Jabotinsky,” Hirst writes.

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“Snuff videos as a sales pitch”. Rafael boasts of human testing in Gaza death camps

Australia’s government awards rich contracts to Israeli drone maker Rafael, which skite to investors about killing Palestinians. Stephanie Tran reports.

Israeli weapons manufacturer Rafael Advanced Defense Systems has posted a video showing an unarmed man being stalked and killed by a drone in Gaza, using the footage to advertise the weapon responsible for his death.

The video, posted to the company’s official account on X, shows a Spike Firefly loitering munition drone as it hovers above a man walking alone through the rubble of a heavily bombed area. The drone silently tracks the man before detonating directly above him, killing him instantly. 

Meanwhile, a young Palestinian girl, Hala, was executed yesterday with a bullet to the the head fired by a quadcopter drone. It is even more grotesque that Israeli weapons manufacturers are crowing about their human testing labs – which are the killing fields of Gaza.

The Spike Firefly drone, first unveiled by Rafael in 2018, is a lightweight, soldier-deployed loitering munition designed for urban combat. Weighing just three kilograms, the drone is launched from a canister and can fly silently above a target for up to 15 minutes before striking with high precision.

The drone can be operated remotely with a tablet, and its camera feed allows operators to stalk targets in real time.

According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has increasingly relied on drones like the Firefly to kill civilians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, with quadcopters being deployed in densely populated residential areas and refugee camps. Their report documents multiple instances of drones being used to assassinate individuals in violation of international humanitarian law.

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The ‘Economy of Genocide’ Report: A Reckoning Beyond Rhetoric

Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in occupied Palestine, stands as a testament to the notion of speaking truth to power. This “power” is not solely embodied by Israel or even the United States, but by an international community whose collective relevance has tragically failed to stem the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Her latest report, ‘From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide,’ submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on July 3, marks a seismic intervention. It unflinchingly names and implicates companies that have not only allowed Israel to sustain its war and genocide against Palestinians, but also confronts those who have remained silent in the face of this unfolding horror.

Albanese’s ‘Economy of Genocide’ is far more than an academic exercise or a mere moral statement in a world whose collective conscience is being brutally tested in Gaza. The report is significant for multiple, interlocking reasons. Crucially, it offers practical pathways to accountability that transcend mere diplomatic and legal rhetoric. It also presents a novel approach to international law, positioning it not as a delicate political balancing act, but as a potent tool to confront complicity in war crimes and expose the profound failures of existing international mechanisms in Gaza.

Two vital contexts are important to understanding the significance of this report, considered a searing indictment of direct corporate involvement, not only in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, but Israel’s overall settler-colonial project.

First, in February 2020, following years of delay, the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a database that listed 112 companies involved in business activities within illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The database exposes several corporate giants – including Airbnb, Booking.com, Motorola Solutions, JCB, and Expedia – for helping Israel maintain its military occupation and apartheid.

This event was particularly earth-shattering, considering the United Nations’ consistent failure at reining in Israel, or holding accountable those who sustain its war crimes in Palestine. The database was an important step that allowed civil societies to mobilize around a specific set of priorities, thus pressuring corporations and individual governments to take morally guided positions. The effectiveness of that strategy was clearly detected through the exaggerated and angry reactions of the US and Israel. The US said it was an attempt by “the discredited” Council “to fuel economic retaliation,” while Israel called it a “shameful capitulation” to pressure.

The Israeli genocide in Gaza, starting on October 7, 2023, however, served as a stark reminder of the utter failure of all existing UN mechanisms to achieve even the most modest expectations of feeding a starving population during a time of genocide. Tellingly, this was the same conclusion offered by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, who, in September 2024, stated that the world had “failed the people of Gaza.”

This failure continued for many more months and was highlighted in the UN’s inability to even manage the aid distribution in the Strip, entrusting the job to the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a mercenary-run violent apparatus that has killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians. Albanese herself, of course, had already reached a similar conclusion when, in November 2023, she confronted the international community for “epically failing” to stop the war and to end the “senseless slaughtering of innocent civilians.”

Albanese’s new report goes a step further, this time appealing to the whole of humanity to take a moral stance and to confront those who made the genocide possible. “Commercial endeavors enabling and profiting from the obliteration of innocent people’s lives must cease,” the report declares, pointedly demanding that “corporate entities must refuse to be complicit in human rights violations and international crimes or be held to account.”

According to the report, categories of complicity in the genocide are divided into arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities, and charities.

These include Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Amazon, Palantir, IBM, and even Danish shipping giant Maersk, among nearly 1,000 other firms. It was their collective technological know-how, machinery, and data collection that allowed Israel to kill, to date, over 57,000 and wound over 134,000 in Gaza, let alone maintain the apartheid regime in the West Bank.

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